Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint, 1207-1231 -- Drama; Tragedies (Drama)
P. 145. ' I demand it.' How far I am justified in putting such
fears into her mouth the reader may judge. Cf. Lib. VIII. section
5. 'The devotion of the people demanding it, her body was left
unburied till the fourth day in the midst of a multitude.' . . .
'The flesh,' says Dietrich, 'had the tenderness of a living body,
and was easily moved hither and thither at the will of those who
handled it . . . . And many, sublime in the valour of their faith,
tore off the hair of her head and the nails of her fingers ("even
the tips of her ears, et mamillarum papillas," says untranslatably
Montanus of Spire), and kept them as relics.' The reference
relating to the pictures of her disciplines and the effect which
they produced on the crowd I have unfortunately lost.
P. 146. 'And yet no pain.' Cf. Lib. VIII section 4. 'She said,
"Though I am weak I feel no disease or pain," and so through that
whole day and night, as hath been said, having been elevated with
most holy affections of mind towards God, and inflamed in spirit
with most divine utterances and conversations, at length she rested
from jubilating, and inclining her head as if falling into a sweet
sleep, expired.'
P. 147. 'Canonisation.' Cf. Lib. VIII. section 10. If I have in
the last scene been guilty of a small anachronism, I have in this
been guilty of a great one. Conrad was of course a prime means of
Elizabeth's canonisation, and, as Dietrich and his own 'Letter to
Pope Gregory the Ninth' show, collected, and pressed on the notice
of the Archbishop of Maintz, the miraculous statements necessary for
that honour. But he died two years before the actual publication of
her canonisation. It appeared to me that by following the exact
facts I must either lose sight of the final triumph, which connects
my heroine for ever with Germany and all Romish Christendom, and is
the very culmination of the whole story, or relinquish my only
opportunity of doing Conrad justice, by exhibiting the remaining
side of his character.
I am afraid that I have erred, and that the most strict historic
truth would have coincided, as usual, with the highest artistic
effect, while it would only have corroborated the moral of my poem,
supposing that there is one. But I was fettered by the poverty of
my own imagination, and 'do manus lectoribus.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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